[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 87: In Which Shanghai Has Too Many Demons (And I Don’t Mean Azryth)

Chapter 87: In Which Shanghai Has Too Many Demons (And I Don’t Mean Azryth)

Shanghai’s pre-dawn streets smelled like street food and impending violence.

The enforcers weren’t even trying to be subtle. Twenty-plus shadow-things arranged in a semicircle around the rift location, which was apparently in an alley behind what looked like a very nice dumpling restaurant.

"They’re guarding dumplings," I said. "Veyrith’s enforcers are literally guarding a dumpling shop."

"They’re guarding the rift that happens to be behind a dumpling shop," Mara corrected, her scanner going haywire.

"Same thing."

"It’s really not."

The enforcers hadn’t attacked yet, just... watched us. Waiting, which was somehow worse than immediate violence.

"This feels like a trap," I observed.

"Because it is a trap," Azryth said, his power already manifesting around his hands in that way that meant things were about to get messy. "Veyrith knows we’re coming now, he’s had hours to prepare."

"How reassuring."

Kelvin stepped forward, grinning like he’d just been invited to his favorite kind of party. "Lord Valek, if I may?"

"By all means."

"Excellent." Kelvin turned to Serra and Kade. "Standard elimination formation?"

"With enthusiasm," Serra agreed.

"I love enthusiasm," Kade said cheerfully.

The three demons moved forward in perfect synchronization, and the enforcers finally reacted, surging toward us in a wave of shadow and malice.

Kelvin was already tearing through the first wave of enforcers with what could only be described as excessive enthusiasm.

"They’re enjoying this too much," I muttered.

"They’re demons," Mara said from her position behind a dumpster that probably cost more than my old apartment. "Violence is basically their love language."

"That’s disturbing."

"But accurate."

The fight was chaos. Kelvin moved like violence personified, Serra’s silver markings glowing as she cut through enforcers with precision that made my technique look amateur, and Kade was just... everywhere at once, somehow.

Azryth stayed between me and the bulk of the fighting, his power forming a barrier that caught the enforcers stupid enough to try for me directly.

I focused on the rift.

It was bigger than the Prague one, maybe ten feet tall, pulsing with that same sickly purple-black light. But there was something else now, something new.

The rift was... aware.

I could feel it watching me, assessing, calculating. Not just a tear in reality anymore, but something with intent behind it.

"That’s new," I said.

"What’s new?" Azryth asked, incinerating two enforcers without looking away from me.

"The rift is... I think it’s conscious."

"That’s concerning."

"Yeah, I’m getting that."

I moved closer, blade raised, trying to see the anchor points through the chaos of combat happening behind me.

There, three primary connections, but they were moving, shifting position like the rift was actively defending itself.

"Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me."

"Problem?" Azryth called.

"The anchor points are mobile!"

"Of course they are." He caught an enforcer mid-lunge, his power blazing. "Veyrith would make it harder."

"How am I supposed to cut something that won’t hold still?"

"Improvise!"

"That’s not helpful!"

An enforcer broke through the line, coming straight for me. My X-ray vision activated automatically now, showing me its structure, its weaknesses, the exact place to strike.

The blade cut through it cleanly.

"Nice!" Kade called from somewhere in the melee. "The warden has good form!"

"Thanks!" I yelled back, then immediately felt ridiculous for having a conversation mid-combat.

I turned back to the rift, watching the anchor points shift and weave, there had to be a pattern, some kind of rhythm I could predict.

I saw it, every seven seconds, they aligned for just a moment.

"Azryth, I need seven seconds of no distractions!"

"You’re asking for a lot!"

"I’m asking for seven seconds!"

"Fine!" His power surged, creating a wall of flame between me and the remaining enforcers. "You have seven seconds starting now!"

I watched the anchor points, counting.

Five seconds.

Six seconds.

Seven—

I struck.

The blade severed the first anchor point perfectly, and I immediately poured power through the binding, Azryth’s essence joining mine to flood the wound and prevent restoration.

The rift screamed, louder than any we’d closed before, and I felt the nexus on the other side responding, pushing back hard.

"It’s fighting!" I gasped. "The nexus is actively fighting the closure!"

"Then fight harder!" Azryth’s voice was strained now, maintaining the barrier while the enforcers hammered against it.

I struck again, severing the second anchor.

The rift pulsed once, violent and angry.

Then it did something I wasn’t expecting.

It opened wider.

Not just wider, it tore itself open, and suddenly enforcers were pouring through the gap, dozens of them, materializing directly in front of me because of course they were, I was standing right there.

"Oh, come on!" I heard Kelvin shout, delighted. "They’re sending more? This is wonderful!"

"That’s not the word I’d use!" I shouted back, because the new wave of enforcers wasn’t heading for the demons currently fighting behind me.

They were all coming straight at me.

The third anchor point was there, aligned, vulnerable for just a few more seconds.

But between me and it were approximately fifteen very angry shadow-demons who really didn’t want me closing their exit.

I raised the blade anyway.

The first enforcer reached me.

Azryth was there.

I didn’t even see him move, one moment he was maintaining the barrier, the next he was directly in front of me, taking the enforcer’s strike meant for my chest.

The impact caught him square in the shoulder with enough force that I heard something crack.

Through the binding, I felt it.

Not just the impact, the pain, sharp and white-hot, radiating from the point of contact. His ribs, I realized distantly, at least two of them broken by the force of the blow.

And because we were bound, I felt every bit of it like it was happening to me.

Something in my chest ignited.

Not pain, rage.

Pure, absolute, incandescent rage that he’d done it again, that he’d thrown himself in front of a hit meant for me, that I had to feel him get hurt because he was too stubborn to let me handle my own fights.

The rage flooded through the binding, from me to him and back again, amplifying, feeding on itself, mixing with his power and mine until it wasn’t two separate sources anymore.

It was one.

The spectral blade in my hand blazed white-hot, brighter than it had ever burned before.

I struck the third anchor point with everything we had.

The rift didn’t just close.

It collapsed inward, imploding with a sound like reality giving up, and every single enforcer that had come through, all fifteen of them, plus the ones still fighting behind me, got sucked back through the tear as it sealed.

The silence after was deafening.

I spun around.

Azryth was on one knee, his hand pressed to his shoulder, his breathing careful in that way that meant his ribs hurt and he was trying not to show it.

"You idiot," I said, my voice shaking with residual rage and fear. "You absolute idiot."

"It would have killed you," he said, like this explained everything.

"And it hurt you, which means it hurt me, which defeats the entire purpose of your stupid self-sacrifice!"

"You’re alive."

"So are you, barely!" I dropped to my knees beside him, my hands hovering uselessly over his shoulder. "Let me see."

"It’s healing."

"Azryth, I felt your ribs break through the binding, let me see."

He moved his hand reluctantly. The wound was already closing, his infernal healing knitting bone and tissue back together, but I could see where the enforcer’s strike had landed, could see the bruising spreading across his shoulder and down his side.

"Two ribs," I said quietly. "You broke two ribs."

"They’re already healing."

"That’s not the point!" My voice cracked. "I felt it, I felt them break, I felt the pain, and you just... you just threw yourself at it like it was nothing!"

"It wasn’t nothing." His hand came up to cup my face, and I realized I was shaking. "But losing you would be worse."

"We talked about this! This morning, we literally just had this argument!"

"I know."

"And you did it again!"

"Yes." No hesitation, no apology. "I told you, if it comes down to you or me, I’m choosing you. Every time."

I wanted to hit him, wanted to yell more, wanted to make him promise he’d stop doing this.

But I could feel everything he wasn’t saying, the absolute certainty that he’d do it again, the bone-deep conviction that my life mattered more than his pain. The fear, buried deep, that if he hesitated even once, I’d be the one hurt instead.

"You’re impossible," I said finally.

"I’ve been told."

Kelvin approached, eyeing the sealed rift with interest. "Impressive closure. The rage amplification was quite effective."

"Noted," I said through gritted teeth.

Mara was already scanning the sealed rift, then Azryth. "The rift’s completely sealed, his ribs are healing clean, should be fine in an hour."

"See?" Azryth said to me. "Fine."

"That word doesn’t mean what you think it means."

I pulled on the key and opened a portal back to the safehouse. "Let’s go."

We stepped through into the common area, Henrik looked up from his monitoring station, took one look at Azryth’s careful posture, and raised an eyebrow.

"Broken ribs?"

"Two," Azryth confirmed. "It’s already healing."

"And you’re going to Seoul in an hour anyway," Mara said, not a question. "The timeline is accelerating, we can’t afford to wait."

"Your ribs can afford to heal properly." I said to Azryth, helping him to the couch, ignoring his protest. "One hour, you sit, I’ll get food."

"I don’t need..."

"One hour," I repeated firmly. "Or I’m not opening the next portal."

I felt his amusement at the threat through the binding, followed by resignation.

"Fine. One hour."

Kelvin, Serra, and Kade had followed us through and were now investigating Henrik’s equipment with far too much interest.

"Don’t touch that," Henrik said without looking up. "Or that. Actually, don’t touch anything."

"We’re just looking," Kade said innocently.

"Look with your eyes, not your hands."

I left them to it and headed for the kitchen, returning with food and water for both of us.

Azryth accepted it without argument, which told me his ribs hurt more than he was letting on.

I sat beside Azryth on the couch, close enough to feel his warmth, to monitor through the binding how his healing was progressing.

"Your ribs better be completely healed in an hour," I said quietly.

"They will be."

"Good, because we’re not doing this again."

"We’ll see."

Through the binding, I felt his certainty that we absolutely would be doing this again.

Impossible demon.

But for now, he was alive, healing, and sitting beside me.

That would have to be enough.

One hour, then Seoul.

Then forty more rifts.

We just had to survive them all.